Guess the weekend is over........

. . . okay with her policies, okay with her personally. Two polls. CNN and this one.

Of course, thankfully, we have DU to tell us otherwise, based on . . . if this was a Sanders poll or a Warren one, it would be celebrated no end, and you know it.

Because of some polls?
Not going to happen.
This is awfully insistent and almost desperate sounding stuff, and so early in the game. Trying to sew up donors, i guess, and perhaps just skip those pesky primaries, I assume.

I'm not understanding who you're arguing with. I'll tell you this, I don't see the same defensive complaints on any of the other potential candidate's threads. Nothing about people trying to shove someone or the other down someone's throats.

Grousing about motivations* behind polls like this sounds desperate. Why should you care what other Democrats are registering in these polls? Why, indeed.

Good to hear you're not posting this to get people to support her.

I don't think Hillary would be a good candidate for you.

and force Americans to compete with workers in Third World countries. I have a real problem with politicians who side with global corporations over the American people and trade away our ability to use our own democratic systems to defend ourselves against corporate abuse on issues as important as wages, worker protections, environmental protections, and internet freedom. It bothers the hell out of me that these agreements have Hillary's handprints all over them.

I despise apologism for austerity and letting criminal banks off the hook in a nation that has already gutted its middle class and whose corporate-friendly policies are enabling inequality to skyrocket at rates greater even than under Bush. I don't want a candidate who talks more about Benghazi than the economic policies that are impoverishing millions of Americans.

I loathe the corporate education and environmental policies associated with Hillary's allies and donors and colleagues, that strip money from our public schools and funnel it to corporate thieves, and that rape our environment for the profit of the oilmongers and warmongers.

I am horrified by "Kill Lists" and private prisons and secret laws and secret courts in the United States of America. And I am morally repulsed by any craven defense of turning the security branches of the US government into a mass surveillance machine targeted at the American people. I am sickened by abuse of the Espionage Act to intimidate journalists, by the federal deployment of militarized police against citizens exercising their Constitutionally protected right to protest, and at the pouring of our tax dollars into propaganda and disinformation campaigns targeted at US citizens.

And I am morally disgusted by any suggestion that the whistleblower who revealed mass surveillance against the American people has more to answer for than the criminals who have orchestrated the spying and lied about it to our faces.

I am angry that corporate, predatory, and even fascistic policies have found their way not only into our government, but into the party I called my own for many years and depended on to represent MY interests and those of my loved ones. It disgusts me that we have to battle these issues with candidates who call themselves Democrats but who are funded by and whose agendas serve the banks and corporations that are destroying this country and driving millions into poverty.

And it offends the hell out of me that our elections have been perverted into a corporate pageant, and that the perversion is so thick and pervasive now that the candidates' mouthpieces no longer even *try* to pretend that they have a duty to appeal to voters and explain how their candidate will represent the people through policy. Instead, we get a constant parade of fluff and pretty pictures, threats that the other guy will hurt you worse, and contempt.

................................


It has to stop. And nothing...absolutely nothing about Hillary's candidacy suggests that she is the one who will stop it. On the contrary, she is intimately connected with all of it; her entire history is wrapped up with these people, and her money comes from them. She is their poster child.

I think she is not only not a good choice for Democrats to run; I think she is a dangerous choice. Why? Because the Republicans will put up someone just as bad or worse, and we will be left with another untenable situation, another sham election in which we are given the choice of Smiling Corporate Candidate Number One or Smiling Corporate Candidate Number Two, either of whom will continue to gut this country for the profit of a very small group of oligarchs.

We can't afford four more years of it. That's no hyperbole. Our Constitution is being dismantled. These trade agreements with Hillary's handprints all over them will result in consequences for American workers that we may never be able to recover from, because the agreements are specifically *designed* to allow corporations to override our customary, democratic protections.

So, yeah, she's not my candidate. I think we all have a responsibility to work very hard to try make sure this party finds someone better....because it may be our last chance, and because there are millions of us out here who deserve better.

You know there's a serious problem with the candidate when the supportive posts for her don't dare mention her policies but are all along the lines of, "People don't hate her! Really!"

It reminds me of when Obama was struggling to get the same enthusiasm from voters in 2012 as in 2008 after so many corporate betrayals, and one of his most avid supporters here actually posted THIS headline, hoping it would help:

They're working on some impressive bumper stickers there!

. . . a whole heap of 'out of touch' comments coupled with either 'concern' or echoing the republican attack dogs in the media and elsewhere.

It's nothing anyone should be proud of, much less pretend that Hillary critics wouldn't have been crowing if the results of the polling had backed up their nonsense about the Clintons and how the public would regard her wealth or her comments about her finances.

It's uncanny how this article panning republicans for their dashed hopes that Hillary would be embroiled in scandal over their trumped up nonsense also serves as a rebuke of folks here who feigned concern over her campaign and gleefully joined in with the republican-oriented attack.

Typically, we expect those who try to attract voters to a candidate to do so with compelling reasons having to do with policy and how great the representation will be.

Complaining that people are being mean to the candidate and accusing them of being just like Republicans if they won't fall in line is a pretty arrogant response. All it does is solidify the impression of her as aligned with those who are authoritarian and contemptuous of the opinions and concerns of ordinary people.

She comes with serious, serious problems with her policies, her record, and, yes, those "out of touch" comments that keep coming out of her mouth.

. . . or wishful thinking.

It's easy right now to take pot shots at Clinton, but it's not going to be so easy for a challenger who needs to flesh out their own policies, record, and personality.

The stuff about being accused of being a republican or worrying about who is mean or whatever, doesn't come from anything I've posted so, I'll leave that to you to flesh out.

I will say there's going to be a head-on realization by folks here who jumped on the comments hoping it would take Clinton down a peg that their politics needs to involve more than gossipy attacks on Hillary's character or lifestyle. I'd concentrate more on promoting the values or character of whoever critics intend to oppose her and leave republicans to stage these weak and transparently false attacks on their own.

People have serious, serious concerns about her policies and how they would affect our lives, but you dismiss that as "pot shots."

And then you make this absurd comment:

The stuff about being accused of being a republican or worrying about who is mean or whatever, doesn't come from anything I've posted so, I'll leave that to you to flesh out.

*Of course* you complained that people are being mean to her, and of course you compared us to Republicans. It's right in your post. You mock the concerns about her being detached from us, derisively putting "concern" in quotation marks and accusing us of echoing Republican attacks:

. . . a whole heap of 'out of touch' comments coupled with either 'concern' or echoing the republican attack dogs in the media and elsewhere.

It's nothing anyone should be proud of, much less pretend that Hillary critics wouldn't have been crowing if the results of the polling had backed up their nonsense about the Clintons and how the public would regard her wealth or her comments about her finances.

And now you double down on the contempt, trying to smear serious complaints about her candidacy, both her policies and her ability to connect with voters, as "gossipy attacks on her character or lifestyle."

That's a pretty nervy comment, given that *you* are the one here posting fluff polls about her popularity rather than engaging about her actual policies. Cali even tried to bring up the TPP above, and you got all offended and protested that you hadn't posted the poll to attract votes. So which is it?....Do you want to talk about her policies or not?

You think echoing the republican attacks makes you a republican? I just think it makes one a tool of their message machine, not really something that would automatically transform you into a republican.

You know what the poll results mentioned in the article refer to. You know it has nothing to do with your complaints about her policies. You know that it is specifically referring to the comments she made about her finances and financial condition.

It's more than clear that's what I'm referring to here, so posturing as some victim of this article, this poll, or my posts is ridiculous. Feigning injury isn't going to change the results of this poll, nor is it going to insulate folks here who repeated these republican-oriented attacks on Clinton from the realization that their gossipy nonsense is weak and ineffective.

As I said, and you promptly ignored, better to focus on promoting the character, record, and policies of whoever you support, instead of relying on this silly nonsense about whether Hillary was broke or not.

You know exactly what I mean and the victim act isn't going to work.

"You think echoing the republican attacks makes you a republican?"

I am not even sure what that comment is supposed to mean. You seem to be trying to make some point by twisting my words. What I said was very simple. You accuse those who criticize Hillary of acting just like Republicans and going into attack mode. Here were my exact words:

"Complaining that people are being mean to the candidate and accusing them of being just like Republicans if they won't fall in line is a pretty arrogant response."

"of course you compared us to Republicans. It's right in your post. You mock the concerns about her being detached from us, derisively putting "concern" in quotation marks and accusing us of echoing Republican attacks"

I said you compared us to Republicans, which you did. And you just did it again, so I am not sure why you are trying to say that I think I am a Republican.

Then you moved on to this wowser:

You know what the poll results mentioned in the article refer to. You know it has nothing to do with your complaints about her policies.

Of course it doesn't. You won't engage on the policies. The entire approach is fluff and popularity contests, which are of course absurd at this point because Hillary is the only Democrat so far with name recognition.

What you fail to understand here is that the refusal to engage on policies is a real issue. It's a real issue because it's not just *you* and the other Hillary promoters who are avoiding talk of her policies; it's the candidate herself. It's a symptom of the Third Way garbage we are constantly fed, that Americans can't seem to get any straight talk from these corporate candidates about their major policies and what they are doing to Americans across the country. Did you see the post recently about the "Official Democratic Party Survey of Voters," which pretended to poll voters on the most important issues of the day but didn't even mention the TPP or austerity or the surveillance state? When does Hillary EVER talk about her involvement in the TPP? When does she ever talk, as Elizabeth Warren does, about specific ways to hold banks accountable, or, as Bernie Sanders does, about reining in the MIC and the surveillance state?

It's a real problem, a serious problem, when the candidate talks repeatedly about her own bank account and Benghazi but can't seem to muster anything concrete about how she would use policy to reverse the looting of American bank accounts and the assaults on our Constitutional protections that her cronies have enabled over the years. You can't blame some voters for concluding that her silence is not surprising, given that her entire history of political activity and funding and associations is allied with those who have been doing the looting.

Americans don't need to "feign" injury at being treated with contempt by politicians and their mouthpieces. Despite the best efforts of corporate Republicans and the Third Way to revise history and lecture us that we have no right to expect a clear agenda from our politicians, we know better. We know that our job is not merely to line up like obedient sheep and support whatever and whomever the party puts in front of us. Our job is to be active choosers of candidates and to demand that candidates appeal respectfully and with sincerity for our support, by proving that they have a plan for and will work for our interests, not the interests of banks and corporations.

Your posts here drip with arrogance when you tell people what they may and may not criticize in a politician who is applying to them for a job. Voters have every right to be concerned about gaffes that repeatedly illustrate the candidate's disconnection from the experience of ordinary Americans and tone deafness in relating to us. Voters have every right to bring up the candidate's avoidance of policy discussion, because it is a glaring and ongoing problem in our politics right now, that the authors of predatory policy refuse to engage on them.

. . . just deal with what's in the op and leave the rest to your imagination. You can't distract from the failure of the latest weak and ineffective co-opting here at DU of the republican campaign against Clinton to twist and distort her words into some sort of rejection by Americans and her party. Looks like that co-opting is a failure. It's interesting how you keep trying to represent that distorting and co-opting as something to defend. Anything, I guess, for the greater effort of putting Hillary down.

This is a specific post directed at specific language and a specific attack on Clinton. It doesn't have a thing to do with the issues and policies associated with Clinton, it's just a petty, false, and republican-oriented ball of campaign trash.

Trying to wrap the republican-generated tiff over her comments about her finances into the rest of your campaign against Clinton just looks petty and weak; and frankly, dishonest in the way that you've bent over backwards posturing as some kind of victim of a solid rebuke of the republican nonsense from actual voters polled.

You'd think that just associating whatever you're doing with a republican-oriented attack would be enough for you to stay away from it, but I guess it's too much for you to resist joining in the smear.

I don't have any problem with discussing actual issues associated with Clinton's record; but I reject these petty personal attacks on candidates which intend to distort and prevaricate. Seems like you could find a better line of attack.

Better yet, you could spend your time promoting what your own choice for that election believes, votes for, and proposes.

We'll keep this one nice and short, okay? I'll summarize my last post for you, because it *was* responsive.

1) The first part was merely my defending myself against a silly complaint, replaying our conversation to show how you twisted my words to make an accusation that wasn't true. That took a couple of quotes and comments.

2) The whole rest of the post was addressing the *specific* complaint you made that you just reiterated here: that I was dragging the conversation into areas that you didn't want to address.

My response, condensed, was that we have a serious problem now of an arrogant political system that is not responding to voters and even tries to lecture us about what we can and can't demand from candidates. I contend that voters have an absolute right to demand details about policy from candidates who do not seem willing to engage on that, AND to decry repeated gaffes that highlight and underscore that glaring disconnection from voters' experiences and needs. We are looking for someone to represent us. Some candidates and their operations seem to need a reminder that they are applying for a job.

Your lecturing in response, yet again, only underscores the problem.

. . . wrap whatever sordid nonsense the republicans throw at Hillary in your campaign against her and run it up the flagpole. Just don't expect everyone to salute.

That's quite an accusation. I have commented on her own comments and behavior, as well as the important issues she repeatedly declines to engage on. You, however, reference "sordid nonsense" and seem to be trying to accuse me of spreading an untrue smear.

To what "sordid nonsense" do you refer?

Here's the definition of "sordid," by the way. That's a pretty strong word to be hurling at voters who merely want the candidate to address their needs:

. . . the republican media campaign distorting Hillary's statements is a sordid affair, imo. It's filthy politics and it's typical republican strategy to twist a Democratic candidate's words for their petty, personal attacks.

All these posts placing yourself in the position of defending that line of attack, but you still want to make it appear that you have clean hands for co-opting this republican-oriented campaign against Hillary because you believe your motives are pure and unassailable.

I'd peel away from the republican gossip and stick to something like you posted above to my suggestion that she's not your candidate which directly confronts her actual record or policy. It should be embarrassing to find the same media which promoted the trumped-up nonsense about her finances and her comments, excoriating republicans for believing it would influence the public against her.

Is it really that hard to admit that the republican plan to smear her with her comments failed miserably? Is it really that hard to let go of that sordid line of attack?

you:

I contend that voters have an absolute right to demand details about policy from candidates who do not seem willing to engage on that, AND to decry repeated gaffes that highlight and underscore that glaring disconnection from voters' experiences and needs.

me:

Raising and debating details about policy is fair and effective.

Prevaricating, distorting attacks on her comments is sordid, and apparently, ineffective politics.

What "Republican gossip" are you talking about? Please list the prevarications (More from the dictionary: That means "LIES.&quot I have made about what she said. Links would be nice.

And for you, at this point, to proclaim that "raising and debating details about policy is fair and effective" takes a heck of a lot of chutzpah, because when I and others have tried to raise policy in this thread, you have repeatedly responded by complaining that that wasn't what you were talking about.

. . . it's about a measure of the ineffectiveness of the latest republican attempt to distort Hillary's comments about her finances. It's also a reflection (and a rebuke) of the efforts of some here at DU in co-opting that specific line of attack for their own political purposes.

I understand why you would want to claim it's a legitimate line of attack, but I strongly disagree. So do, apparently, many folks in the Democratic party. That has to sting.

And now you have the audacity to tell ME to stick to the topic.

The truth is that you are the one doing the smearing. You are hurling ugly accusations at voters for having the audacity to express opinions about this candidate, her avoidance of the issues that really matter, and her repeated demonstration of her tone deafness in referencing voters' concerns.

When political messaging on behalf of a candidate sinks to this level: repeated posting of issue-free popularity polls followed by arrogant lecturing and attempts to smear voters who will not merely shut up and cheer, we have a serious problem in our parties' attitudes toward voters.

This is a very sad thread, but illustrative as hell of the utter contempt that voters receive from the two corporate parties today.

. . . I'm only discussing or responding to what's expressed in the op. I'm not making any negative commentary on your other grievances against Hillary Clinton. I've indicated that those complaints of yours which center on policy and issues appear to be a winning strategy.

I've encouraged you to associate your campaign against Hillary with that kind of substantive debate, and to leave republicans to make these sordid, distorting, and prevaricating attacks on her comments on their own. They've embarrassed themselves by believing the American public would be swayed by such a tactic.

Many, you included, are also rebuked by this poll which shows that appropriating that specific line of republican messaging into your own campaign against Hillary can be as embarrassingly rejected by the public as it was for republicans using this line and this specific tactic.

What's the 'messaging' in this post? Don't appropriate dumb republican attacks into your own opposition.

Stand up, as you did in the post above, and shout from the rooftops about your differences with Hillary. That's all well and good. But, beware thinking that these kind of slippery republican distortions of what our Democratic candidates are saying is good and proper fodder for your own campaign.

if I don't die crying first.

The irony of your complaining that this particular criticism of Hillary lacks "substance," when the very point of all those threads was that Hillary insults voters by emoting about herself and her own Goldman-Sachs style of poverty instead of showing any awareness whatsoever of what Americans are going through and a candidate's responsibility to offer policies that will help is just surreal.

The truth is that people responded to her actual words, which were about herself rather than us. Now, you can scold and lecture voters all day long for daring to express how those tone-deaf words from a multi-millionaire and architect of the TPP that is aimed directly at us, made us feel.

You can try to insinuate all day that voters deserve scolding and shaming for having the audacity to think strategically during an election year and suggest that maybe, just maybe, we can do better than a candidate who not only is intimately connected to the corporate predators and malignant corporate policies that are gutting this country, but ALSO shows a persistent tendency to *highlight* that glaring problem by repeatedly making insensitive and embarrassing gaffes like this.

You can keep whipping out the ugly adjectives to describe anyone who criticizes, using words like "prevaricator" (e.g., "liars&quot and "sordid" (e.g. base, filthy, dishonest), and comparing those who criticize to Republicans.


All you are doing is driving home and entrenching the impression that the Third Way has created for itself and, increasingly, for our government: that it is increasingly detached from the people, unempathetic, authoritarian, and contemptuous. That our concerns and criticisms will be met not with attempts to understand and address them, but with denial, contempt, and smear.

Your protestations here that you are happy to talk about her policies on the surveillance state, austerity, the TPP are empty...embarrassingly so. Please post links to all the threads where you have shown even the slightest inclination to engage about her in these areas.

Put simply, people are sick of the arrogance and the bullshit in the messaging from corporate candidates. We hear an awful lot of lectures about how we the people are doing it wrong by not appreciating them enough or daring to criticize or demand answers. We hear precious little about what they are ready to do for us.

. . . the Democratic party apparently just shrugged and dismissed that republican-oriented line of attack; rejected the cynical politics behind that distorting attack.

I don't know why you think it's a winner. It has loser spelled all over it, from the first republican who authored the attack to the minions and others who've adopted the messaging about her comments as their own.

I'd drop it, but if you're satisfied with a strategy that appears to be a loser with Democrats, then so be it. Carry on. Go easy, though, all of that laughing and crying doesn't sound healthy.

Exhibit Z, and it hurts.

God, American voters deserve better than this.

Perhaps there's someone on DU who'll offer a substantive counter-argument.

Refusal by the media to address them, refusal by the candidates to address them, refusal by the campaigns to address them.

We have reached an unfathomably sick point in our politics when candidates actually expect to get through entire campaigns without even mentioning some of the most important issues and predatory policies facing voters. Not only that, but their mouthpieces actually LECTURE voters who try to get them to engage.

Remember this disgraceful digging in of heels from the Obama campaign in 2012?

The corporate candidates really do expect, with the help of the media, to get through this entire election season without talking about the TPP or the TISA, austerity, mass surveillance, secret courts and secret laws....none of it. It will be a circus of BENGHAZI and wedge issues and issue-free popularity polls like the one in the OP.

It's sick, it's arrogant as hell, and it's a perversion of everything our representative system is supposed to be about.

If you can fill the landscape, horizon-to-horizon, before primary season begins, you're less likely to have serious challengers. No serious challengers, no need to address the issues.

because a real debate exposes not just bad policy on their part, but corruption. Monied corruption of our elections, corruption of our media and messaging, corruption of policy direction by corporate money, and, increasingly, corruption aimed at the very foundations of our democratic system, including our Constitution.

These politicians who rise based on cash from corporate coffers are very dangerous behind the smiles and the fluff, and their messaging is malignant. The nation is beginning to expose them, and they are pulling out every single stop to try to stop the debate, to stop the rocks from being turned over.

Nope, she's on a book tour and she's currently a private citizen. Therefore, she can say whatever she wants, and if the media and some DUers don't like it, that's just too bad.

I fail to see your point here. We get to respond to what she says, whether she has officially declared or not. And, honestly, to try to split this hair here, as though she weren't already being hyped both at DU and in the media as "invincible" and as though her declared status is even relevant here at all, smells of desperation.

We don't even know whether in the end she will choose to run or not.

Furthermore, she polls better with liberal Democrats than she does with moderates and conservatives.

That is why Third Way candidates pivot leftward in their rhetoric during elections, promising to support things like a public option, ending the surveillance state, and standing for the 99 percent, in order to get votes.

Once the elections are over, however, they go back to working for their corporate donors and we get stuff like more austerity, new loopholes for insurance companies, planes being forced down to try to get whistleblowers, and vicious, predatory trade agreements.

OK...just so long as she stays away from the brown acid.

. . . drop out?

Why is the conservatives so afraid of Hillary running so fat they do not have a candidate who can beat her in the polls. Every word she says or in some cases the lies which are told isvreprated over and over. Yep, she has them running scared already.

Because 55% v. 37% looks an awful lot like the starting point for the 2016 election....

more poll results: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/06/29/hillary-clinton-seen-as-empathetic-by-democrats-less-so-by-independents/

. . . without much evidence of that.

anything that begins with "I believe" is clearly an opinion.

Every single poll shows that her policies are wildly unpopular compared to those of a Warren or a Sanders or a Reich.

It makes perfect sense that she's ahead in polls right now. She's the Democrat whose name people recognize. But introduce any of these candidates who seem actually to be interested in reversing some of this corporate garbage....let them introduce themselves and let them start to compare what they want to do with what Hillary has been doing all along...and just watch what happens.

I think you have it exactly right....A mile wide and half an inch deep.

Yep, that's my opinion.

. . . you'd be all over it.

I could be mistaken. If I find any I'll post it right away.

It's simply an opinion and one we'll have the answer to within the next 18 months or so.

Hillary has more support now than she did the last time she ran. She has the highest polling of any non-incumbent in the history of the Democratic party. They don't like her, so they have a hard time accepting that she's extremely popular within the party.

in rhetoric if not in actual policy.

if it fits your little meme.

The caucuses come to mind. Obama and Hillary were a hair apart in votes and pledged delegates. She will not make the same mistakes.

If you live up to your promise to leave DU if she's nominated, good times.

If you don't? Better times. There's nothing like pizza to fulfill ones appetite.

will go unrequited. I won't have any problem taking a hiatus from DU. I've taken them before and no hole was left in my life.

Until then, don't get ulcers or increase your high blood pressure with your frustration over my presence here.

Then again, I'm a pessimist by nature, so choosing the lesser of two evils feels very intuitive for me.

But some small insignificant minority on the apolitical left will never grasp it. They're out of touch.

Sid

. . . anything that goes against her will be celebrated and quoted over and over by critics here like a manifesto from heaven.

Were the words "as well as other candidates" part of the poll question? If so, who were the other candidates, or was that left up to the individual to decide?

I wonder what the results would have been if the question had been simply "Can Hillary Clinton relate to ordinary working Americans?"

I would say she can relate as well as Jeb Bush, but then that's not saying much, is it?

It's a shame the article on msnbc.com doesn't give that information.

The media used to crank out stories that it said made her look more human--which was bizarre and insulting because what else would she be?

And she has gone through many experiences that make her sympathetic to the "average" person--she has dealt with a cheating husband, vengeful and unstable "other women," she has raised a child and is about to be a grandmother, she has dealt with more than one health crisis for herself and her husband, and she has contended with a powerful mother in law and with sometimes embarrassing siblings and other in laws. And though her money woes may be on a different scale than most, she has dealt with the struggle of overwhelming debt--she dna her husband have likely taken speaking jobs they would rather not have had so they could make ends meet, pay their bills, and support their child's education.

How could she not be able to relate to the average person?

will take center stage, or whether her huge money advantage and vast connections among the wealthy will propel her to victory.

But to pretend that Hillary has a surfeit of charisma and charm?

I think most of those reasons are ridiculous but fortunately its not a large enough percentage of folks to have a chance at preventing her from being elected.

Neither does Hillary, for that matter. What is extremely annoying is the constant barrage of attacks that have zero to do with policy. This nonsense about her wealth is just that, nonsense. Although, leave it to Du to propagate every fake scandal and RW talking point that is out there just because they don't like her as a potential nominee. How would they feel if we posted every piece of junk that's being said about Warren? We don't because we have more common sense than to do that.